Neil O'Brien MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 28 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is actually quite difficult to talk to clause 13, as it looks as though pretty much all the important detail here is to be worked out in regulations. Of course, the Government should support local authorities to minimise the risk of disruption to children in homes or independent fostering placements from providers getting into financial difficulty, and financial oversight should indeed be part of their registration conditions. So far, so good. However, proposed new section 30ZE(2) of the Care Standards Act 2000 states that a financial oversight condition “is a condition specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State for the purposes of this section.” Subsection (4) lists examples such as size, the number of children looked after, geographical concentration and so on. Though this area is being left to regulations, could the Minister say more about the sort of thresholds the Government are considering for these metrics—particularly as the Secretary of State will have so much power, including to alter all the criteria in regulations? Although this is broadly a sensible measure, it is quite an open-ended and new power. The clause is already quite long, but the Opposition wondered about an improvement, perhaps as it goes through the other place, to fundamentally change the registration approach for any new market entrants, so that it is a condition of delivery that they provide financial transparency up to the parent company level, give a quarterly going concern update to the regulator and provide financial information as reasonably requested by the regulator. Has the Department considered similar requirements, so that all providers would have to give full financial transparency as a matter of course and further investigation would follow if concerns were raised? We are completely sympathetic to proportionality in regulation, but in this case we could reasonably put the onus on providers to share the information systematically, rather than having to wait for a tip-off from a whistleblower or for a concern to become apparent. Sometimes it is the analysis of consistently reported data that provides the tip-off that there is a problem. To use an example from a slightly different field, in my constituency I have been involved in cases where the integrated care board is regulating GP practices, and I have always thought there is a strong case for ICBs to get more data up front. Twice, when there has been a problem in my constituency and I have talked to the ICB afterwards, it seemed to me that if it had been getting financial data, the issue would have been obvious and there would have been signs long before whistleblowers ever went to the Care Quality Commission. I wonder whether consistent reporting analysis of data would allow us to see problems coming before we get to whistleblowers and other problems down the line. One issue is therefore whether we should have reporting on a more regular basis. The Opposition have worries of the same kind about this clause as we did about clause 11, though in this case, instead of an improvement plan, it is called a recovery and resolution plan. Again, thinking about independent schools, there is a risk that time and resource get spent preparing the request for the plan, writing the plan, challenging the plan as needed, writing a better plan and going through iterations. In the case of these providers, do we have the financial expertise, either in Ofsted or the Department, to assess the plans? It looks as though there is a recognition that we do not, because proposed new section 30ZI includes the power to arrange for an independent business review. That makes sense, but for reasons best known to the Bill drafters that does not appear to include scrutinising the recovery and resolution plan. I am not sure why not. I do not know whether that is a slip of the draftsman’s pen, as they say, or whether it is deliberate. My understanding is that Ofsted already has the power to inspect the financial position of schools, but there is a limit on what it does because of the need for a high level of expertise to pick through these cases. Looking at the accounts of a school or group of schools is simpler than analysing the complex debt and ownership structures that we see in some of the private equity-owned children’s homes. In practice we know that the market is so tight for placements that the loss of even a smaller provider would be disruptive, and the timing of the issuing of the advanced warning notices set out in proposed new section 30ZJ will be terminal for the affected businesses. Page 47 of the policy summary states that the regulations may be extended in scope, “so that they may provide that a person is not fit to carry on an establishment or agency if a parent undertaking has failed to comply with the financial oversight scheme.” I am unclear where that provision is in the Bill. Perhaps the Minister could clarify that, because it is quite a complicated clause. Are there any other potential extensions of the Secretary of State’s power by regulations here? Could the Minister clarify the thinking behind allowing Ofsted to determine that someone applying for registration is not a fit and proper person to manage an organisation in this area?

• 28 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I was quite reassured by the Minister’s thoughtful comments and his clear appreciation of the difficulty and extreme number of obstacles to making this power practicably usable. Kenneth Clark said that he did not know what civilisation was, but he knew it when he saw it, and I think quite a few Members of this House, including those on the Government Benches, have the same feeling about excess profits—we feel that they are too high, but we struggle to say what we think an acceptable level would be. That challenge will not get any easier over time. As ever, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire is more articulate than I am, and he made the point well that this is not a profit cap but a retrospective clawback mechanism, which is another reason why it will be so hard to use in practice. Unless we are going to get into problems of retrospection and loads of legal action, we will be giving people advance warning, which will give them time to move money around and ensure that things look compliant. I am keen to move amendment 25 to a vote. I promise that we will make great progress on subsequent clauses; I am not trying to be a dog in the manger. I understand and accept the Minister’s arguments about the things that the Secretary of State would do before commencing such a power—that was reassuring—but there should be a national assessment of the number of available placements. The Minister said that such things happen locally, and that someone could tot them up; I hope the Government will do that. It would be a powerful thing for the Minister to do and would give him huge clout in driving this agenda forward, so I hope he will do it even if the Committee votes against this amendment. There should be a German word for a bit of data that we think should exist—we look on the internet and think we should be able to find it, but somehow it does not exist. This assessment of what is available out there is an example of that. I am keen to put our amendment to the vote, to make that point for our friends in the other place when they discuss the Bill, but I am reassured by the Minister’s comments. Question put, That the amendment be made.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for her patience. Will the Government undertake to have an authority-by-authority assessment of what the patchwork quilt looks like now? For everyone’s ease and benefit, what will the changes mean for those who are not just following the model byelaws, because they are maybe different in each different place? Is the Minister happy to at least go away and have a look at that?

• 28 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will be much briefer, because this is essentially a consequential clause relating to clause 14, but I want to touch on a couple of things. A further difficulty in enforcing this profit clawback, and understanding what excess profit is, is that even within a single market not all these institutions are doing the same thing. In a funny way, the remarks that the hon. Member for Twickenham made about clause 14 go to that point. We look at the very large unit costs—that is a horrible expression—or the costs per child of care in independent special schools, and we think, “Gosh, these unit costs are so high. Surely we have to do something about this.” The Government and the Opposition are seized of that point—we do not want to spend money that we do not need to spend—but we should sometimes look at the individual cases. For example, a child in my constituency who has just been put into one of these brilliant institutions—Red Kite, over in Northamptonshire—literally needs constant help just to keep breathing, so we have to be clear about whether these things are really like for like. It is true that that independent special school is a lot more expensive than a mainstream school, but is it really like for like? As we think about capping profits in this industry, a further complexity is that, depending on the caseload and the child, the profit and risk levels will be different. Within an individual institution, there could be some unbelievably hard-to-place, hard-to-look-after, very difficult and expensive children, alongside other children, so it will not be easy to work out an acceptable level of profit. Proposed new schedule 1A(6), on the right of appeal against imposition of monetary penalty, further extends the opportunities for people to game the system. First, it is retrospective—it is about clawing money back from people after the fact, which gives them an opportunity to manage their profits so they look like they are compliant—and then there is a right of appeal. I understand why that is in the Bill, but to return to the metaphor about the lack of proper enforcement with regard to illegal working and the lack of information about the fines that are collected, by the time we have tried to claw money back retrospectively and given people the right of appeal, it would be easy for them to say, “This is in the name of my brother. We have collapsed the company. Sorry, we don’t have any money to pay this fine,” so we may not end up with anything at the end of it. Meanwhile, the people who are really behind the scheme have moved on and are doing the same thing down the road. I want to highlight those points. This clause is consequential on clause 14. If we have clause 14, it makes sense to have clause 15, so we will not oppose it. I want to emphasise again, however, that there are even more dimensions to why it will be difficult to use this measure, so the focus should be on supply. Question put and agreed to. Clause 15 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak to amendment 25 and clause 14. I thank the hon. Member for Twickenham for what she said about our amendment. I completely agree that, ideally, we would have what we are asking for on a regular basis, but just to be clear, the requirement on the Secretary of State to report to Parliament details and analysis of available placements is in amendment 25 because we want to keep the focus firmly on supply and capacity, which I think we agree are the ultimate drivers of the problem we are addressing. As we said in response to the oral statement to the House by the Secretary of State, we welcome the continuing focus on issues that we identified, and we set up the market intervention advisory group to look at that when we were in government. The heart of the problem, however, as I think we all recognise, is the lack of supply of high-quality places in residential, kinship and foster care for looked-after children. Demand for such places outstrips supply, and that is what is causing the high cost of placements. It is striking that in its 2022 report, the Competition and Markets Authority did not recommend a profit cap because, in its words, “The central problem facing the market…is the lack of sufficient capacity.” The CMA concluded that taking measures to limit the profitability of providers would “risk increasing the capacity shortfall.” So if we do not take action to increase capacity first, ironically, we risk simply driving up prices and exacerbating the shortage of places. Likewise, the review commissioned by the last Government and carried out by the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) found that profit caps would not work as it would be, “relatively easy for providers to reallocate income and expenditure to maintain profit levels”, a point already alluded to by the hon. Member for Twickenham. The capacity problem rests on the availability of places and the demand for those places. We spoke previously about the need to do much more to grow fostering to reduce demand. Our amendment is designed to ensure that that capacity issue remains at the front of everybody’s mind at both the national and the local levels, so that at neither level do we fall into thinking that we can fix this without primarily fixing supply. I understand the argument that it cannot hurt to have the power in the clause, which is the reason why we will not vote against it, but it is unlikely to change things very much compared with increasing supply. In fairness, the Bill’s policy notes state that the profit cap power “is intended only to be used as a last resort should other measures not have the expected impact”. The hon. Member for Twickenham talked about it being a backstop. My only worry is we should not even rely on it as a backstop. As the previous independent review and the CMA highlight, it would not be easy to use. One reason is that it would inevitably have to be backward-looking. The Government’s policy notes state: “We are aware that the administration of the profit cap will be a retrospective look back at whether or not the profit cap has been breached in a past period. It will therefore not necessarily prevent breaches in itself, but it will allow action to be taken retrospectively if such breaches have occurred and act as a disincentive for further breaches.” We will be looking backwards at a sector where there are a lot of complicated financial arrangements, and because we are looking backwards, people will have time to do all kinds of things to make sure that they look like they are complying, for the reasons I have mentioned. As Ministers take this measure through the other place and consider implementation, I strongly recommend that, if they regulate for fines, they set up an absolutely iron-clad mechanism to ensure that those fines are paid. I was very disturbed to learn from an answer to a parliamentary question the other day that the Home Office has no idea what proportion of the fines imposed for illegal working are actually paid. In that sector, people just move on—they set up a new company, or get their brother to start a new thing. They just move on, and they do not pay the fine. It is widely known that we do not even know how many people are paying those fines. Obviously, we need to prevent that from happening in this sector, where there is equal scope to move on, to set up new things and collapse the old, and so escape fines. I am sure Ministers are seized of that risk; I just wanted to emphasise what they need to do when regulations are made. Another way out that Ministers might want to try to close off is that some in the sector adopt offshore models of provision. Might the Government want to use this rare legislative moment to discourage, either in primary legislation or by giving themselves the power to regulate, the commissioning of places with providers that are domiciled offshore? They might want to take that power now, but even if they fix it, there will continue to be so many opportunities to fudge and to manage profits with interest and debt. I do not mean to labour this because, as I listen to some people in the debate, including Ministers, I hear that they understand the difficulties, but then I hear from some other people, and they think, “Oh, we can just control prices to get out of this, without addressing the underlying real problem about supply.” When I was at the Treasury, one reason we were really keen on the work we were leading on through the OECD on base erosion and profit shifting was that we were faced with the endless generation of new tax wheezes and profit-shifting arrangements. They all had these exotic names—the Dutch sandwich, the green jersey and the double Irish; people were constantly generating new ways of moving profits around. I want to bring that to life a bit by asking some questions. How would profit be defined for the purposes of the cap? The policy summary talks about “(on average) profits of 19.4% on fostering, 22.6% on children’s homes and 35.5% on supported accommodation.” I went back to look at the 2022 CMA report from which those numbers are drawn, but it just talks about margins, so I was not clear on whether we were talking about pre-tax, post-tax, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. I am keen to understand what measure of profit we are using. What analysis have the Department done to think about the capital needs of the sector over the next five years? It will need large sums, which may make profit capping harder. Fundamentally, there is a big question about what level of profit the Department for Education deems to be acceptable. In in her articulate and thoughtful remarks, the hon. Member for Twickenham mentioned one provider that had a very high rate and another that she said was more acceptable. That is the heart of the issue: given the powers that are being taken, do Ministers at this stage have some rough barometer of what they would regard as unacceptable profits? Alongside this debate, even as we as we speak, the consultation is running. Obviously, in an ideal world it would have been much better to have had the results of that consultation before the debate and before we moved to legislate. To say we are being asked to sign a blank cheque is an overstatement; I am less worried about it than that. Obviously, though, it would have been much better to have the results of the consultation. What is the timescale of the consultation and when will we have some results from it? Is the Minister already able to share any findings? I am labouring the point slightly, but I want the Minister’s reaction to the issue, which I am trying to raise in different ways, of the difficulty of capping profits in this kind of industry with these kinds of players so that the concerns that caused the CMA and the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington not to recommend profit caps do not come to bear in practice. A fundamental question is what the evidence is that, on a like-for-like basis, private sector providers are more expensive than either charities or local authority provision in this area. The numbers may exist, but I have not seen them. If the margins are so high, why are more providers not entering the market? It is a strange thing: there is not enough supply, but we think profits are too high. What is the barrier to entry? It may be that all those questions are addressed in the impact assessment, which is one reason that it is frustrating that we still do not have it. The DFE says that it is trying to do other things to tackle excess profits. In its policy summary notes to the Bill, it said: “Until these other measures have had time to be implemented and have effect, we will not know whether regulatory action in the form of a profit cap is necessary.” That is totally sensible; I completely agree. What are the Minister’s thoughts on timing for making a decision on that? We have a consultation now. The Ministers are trying to do other things to tackle excess profits now; once implemented, they will take time to have an effect, if they are going to have an effect. In what year will we potentially make a decision on the profit cap? As I started to make the mental Gantt chart, I wondered whether this was a decision for the end of this Parliament or the next. I just want a sense of what Ministers think about the timing for making that decision. Page 53 of the policy summary notes says: “The level of any future profit cap would depend on a number of factors, including market conditions at the point that we make a decision that a cap is needed.” That line is a bit mysterious. This may be obvious, but it is not obvious to me—what does that mean in practice? I could not work out which way round it was: would there be no profit capping if supply was too limited, as there would be no scope to do it, or would profit capping come in if supply was limited and prices higher than Ministers wanted? I was not sure in which direction the arrows ran between market conditions and the decision on having a profit cap. We are not against the clause standing part of the Bill. We are obviously keen on our amendment, and indeed the improvement to it suggested by the hon. Member for Twickenham, but, as an amendment, it is what it is. But all of this is just an aim. We think there are massive limits to how usable this power will be in practice and we do not want it to become a distraction from fixing the main issue, which is supply. To use an example from housing policy, which is apt, given the Chair’s former Select Committee role, the places around the world that have tried to rely on rent controls to fix housing problems generally fail. The people who focus on supply generally do much better. That is the spirit behind our amendment and our questions to the Minister.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I simply want to lodge a very specific question about proposed new section 30ZC(3)(a) of the Care Standards Act 2000 and the category of people who may not be given a regulatory fine but instead must be prosecuted. I raised the issue in this morning’s session about whether those people would not be able to get a regulatory fine because of the individual case being dealt with, or whether it was the case that anybody who had a previous history of being found guilty of any of these things could not have a regulatory fine applied to them. I would be grateful if the Minister can clear that up now, or if he will undertake to write to me about it. It is just to understand what the law is proposing in that respect.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  We support clause 19, which closes an important gap in the law regarding the ill treatment and neglect of 16 and 17-year-olds. I have some specific questions. Have the Government considered making the ill treatment or wilful neglect of a child aged 16 or 17 in a children’s home or other regulated setting, as set out in the Bill, an aggravating factor in the sentencing of those cases? The low level of the terms “ill treatment” and “wilful neglect” sits uncomfortably beside the context, reality and vulnerability of those children. Will the Government think about the criminal justice side of that? My second question is about children who are held on remand in the youth estate. Members who have read my Substack will know that, both under the last Government and this one, I have complained a lot about the growth in the remand population in the adult and youth estates, and the court delays that drive that. A lot of children now in the youth estate are held on remand—about 40%—so can the Minister confirm that these provisions will apply to children who are held on remand in youth detention accommodation, and not just to those who have been sentenced? Those on remand are there temporarily, and as we fix one important hole in the law, I want to check whether we need to fix another one, or whether it is already covered. I am happy if the Minister wants to write to us on that point because it is quite detailed.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I have a brief question. I understand what the Minister is trying to do here; the Secretary of State is taking powers to require the Ofsted chief inspector to share information with them in connection with the functions under this part. Can the Minister explain how that differs from the current ability of His Majesty’s chief inspector to share information with the Secretary of State? As the Minister just said, proposed new section 30ZO(8) is clear that it cannot contravene the GDPR legislation anyway, so I am trying to understand what gap this clause is trying to fix.

• 27 Jan 2025 · Apprenticeships · Hansard source

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  The Government have said in answer to written questions that they have a forecast for the number of apprenticeships but that they will not publish it for Members to see, which is a shame. At the last oral questions, the Secretary of State said it was still the Government’s policy to allow employers to spend 50% of their apprenticeship levy money on other things. Is not the reason the Government will not publish their forecast for the number of apprenticeships that their policy will lead to a sharp reduction in the number of people starting apprenticeships?

• 27 Jan 2025 · Sixth-form Colleges: Pay Award · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) has asked a very important question. The Government funded the pay award for schools and academised sixth-form colleges but, unlike last year, not for stand-alone sixth-form colleges. That decision has already led to seven days of industrial action. After threats of judicial review, the Department for Education offered some additional funding, but only £7 million of the £19 million that is needed. That funding gap has led to a pay gap, and as a result the National Education Union has more strikes planned and the NASUWT is also balloting. What is the Government’s plan to end the dispute and end the damage that is being done to those students?

• 27 Jan 2025 · National Insurance Contributions · Hansard source

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  The decision not to compensate nurseries for the national insurance increase has already pushed providers “to the brink”, according to the Early Years Alliance, and many in schools, including schools with nurseries, are worried that they will be next. Local councils received a bill of £1.8 billion as a result of the national insurance increase, but received compensation for less than a third of that because the indirect costs were not covered. Can the Minister reassure the House that compensation for the increase will cover all the costs to schools, not just the direct costs?

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Sir Christopher. I will include it here—I just wanted to double-check. Although I have asked lots of questions about it, we totally agree with the spirit of the clause. In fact, in February 2023, the last Conservative Government published a strategy and consultation on reforming children’s social care called “Stable Homes, Built on Love”. That was partly a response to reports published in 2022, including the final report of the independent review of children’s social care, which was very ably put together by the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister). The 2023 strategy said that, over the following two years, the Government would invest £200 million, “laying the foundations for whole system reform and setting national direction for change.” After two years, the Government would refresh the strategy, scale up the approaches and bring forward new legislation, and in a sense that is what is happening now. This Government are doing some of the things that we had hoped to do when we were in government. We are obviously not against new legislation; in fact, as part of the strategy, we provided £45 million to launch the Families First for Children pathfinder in 12 local areas for the following two years. That was going to test some of the measures in the Bill, such as more multi-agency working and early, non-stigmatising help and group decision making. We set up those pilots partly because of one of the measures in clause 1. Those pilots started in July 2023 and, frustratingly, the results are supposed to be out in the next couple of months. Because of the way that things happen in this place, we are in the slightly frustrating position of having done a proper experiment—we have tested the concepts in clause 1 in the pilot—as we always say we want to do as politicians, but we do not get to hear the results, which are potentially just weeks away. Have Ministers had sight of early findings from those pilots? Would they be prepared to make them available to Members of this House and of the other place, either in written form or via access to those who have been doing the work of pulling the findings together? It is very frustrating: there is a good piece of evidence, on which a lot of time and money has been spent, and yet, at the point at which we are legislating, we do not quite have access to it. It is weeks away. I hope that Ministers will find a way to share the findings with Members of both Houses. As I alluded to, I read the Foundations report. Based on a randomised controlled trial, it states: “We estimate that if family group conferences were to be rolled out across England, 2,293 fewer children would go into care in a 12-month period”. That would be about a 7% drop, so that is a very large effect. If the RCT is right and it is not just a pilot effect, the effect would be big. We have that estimate from an external group, but I would like to know what the Government think the clause will do to the number of people in care. On the one hand, that is very encouraging. Having 7% fewer children safely flowing into care every year would be a glorious and fantastic outcome, which is why both sides are interested in the model. On the other hand, such a big change would bring with it some downsides and risks, as is inevitable when we are talking about so many children. The Foundations report concludes that “There is a need to undertake further research”. I therefore have another question for the Minister: what gold standard randomised controlled trial work have the Government planned to understand the impacts of the change if it is rolled out as we expect? I am speaking specifically of the potential negative impacts, which will be smaller in number and hard to look at. We might think, “Wonderful, we have 7% fewer children flowing into care every year. That is great,” but what happens to the children who do not end up in care but have a bad experience in another way? We all hope that will be a much smaller number, but when there is a big upside, there will probably be downsides as well. It is important to have a piece of research in train to try to measure those downsides and check whether the good consequences that we hope for also come with negative consequences. Unless we have the research that Foundations has called for, we will not find that out. We do not disagree on the attractiveness of family group decision making in principle, but we need to make it work and to minimise the risks. Our amendment is one way to do part of that. We need to make sure that we are seizing all the opportunities of this legislative moment; they do not come around too often, as the Minister pointed out the other day. As the Bill goes through, we need to get a lot more information about that consequential reform. That will come partly from the Government’s impact assessment, when it is published, and partly from the Government providing the answers to some of our questions. I have given lots of examples, and I hope that Ministers will think very carefully about some of the suggestions that we are getting from the serious experts who have been doing this for a long time. They are totally independent—they just want the right thing for kids and to ensure that we get the upsides of this change, which we all support in principle, while minimising the downsides.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I know that the Minister is trying to get us the impact assessments and is completely sincere about that. Will she undertake to get them while we are still in Committee?

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for the intervention. A lot of us will have seen such situations where there is not a minute to lose. To complete my sentence, the woman was about to have—I think—her third or fourth child. This is not to criticise her, but a child would not have been safe with her for a single minute. The priority has to be getting children away from people who are dangerous to them. I worry about pace, and our amendment 18 makes the importance of pace clear. It would insert: “Nothing in this section permits an extension to the 26-week limit for care proceedings in section 14(2)(ii) of the Children and Families Act 2014.” I was struck by what the head of CAFCASS told us on Tuesday. She said that the Bill “probably could move” the requirement for the family group decision-making meeting “down to the point at which there are formal child protection procedures starting so that the family can get to know what the concerns are, work with the child protection plan for longer, understand what the concerns are and demonstrate whether the protection can happen.” –– [ Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 31, Q68.] This is the bit of her evidence—she knows a lot more about this than I do—that struck me: “if the Bill were to stay as drafted at the edge of care, I think there are risks for very young children, and babies in particular. The meetings will be difficult to set up. People will not turn up. They will be rescheduled”. –– [ Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 31, Q68.] She went on: “For very young children when you are concerned, if they are still with the parents, which is sometimes the case, or even with a foster carer, you want permanent decisions quickly. That does not negate the need for the family to be involved. You can have it much earlier because you have been worried for a while at that point.” –– [ Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 31, Q70.] Our amendment does not encompass all those concerns, but it does seek to ensure that this very sensible provision in clause 1 does not slow down measures to keep children safe. Given that there we were told a few other things by CAFCASS, I should also be clear about what our amendment does not do. It does not address my concerns about people and families—indeed, extended families—using the move to primary legislation to bring about legal action, such as a judicial review, against the decisions of local authorities, or using lawfare or the threat of legal action against local authorities, perhaps to force their way into a room when most of the social workers and other people involved would much rather they were not there because they are inappropriate people. Protecting against that risk is legally much more complicated, which is why the Government have not tabled an amendment on that point. Ministers may say that the legal worries are less than I am supposing, but will they agree to look at this issue? The last thing we want, once this goes from being guidance to being statute, is people saying, “I’ve got a right to this meeting. You didn’t have me in the meeting. I am going to challenge this decision,” and all that sort of stuff. Hopefully, there is no risk, but I would love to see Ministers consider that point. Nor does our amendment address moving meetings earlier in the process. As drafted, the clause encourages LAs to put pretty much all their cases to a meeting at the pre-proceeding stage—it has to be done before it goes to court—but lots of the people we heard evidence from think it would be desirable to have the meetings earlier, before the case enters the much less consensual pre-court process. By the time the case gets to the pre-proceedings stage, it is normally pretty clear that it will be hard to reach an amicable solution. As I said, these questions do not come from us, but from people who know more about the issues than I do. I would like Ministers to respond to the points made by various experts and official groups. The head of CAFCASS said on Tuesday that we should move the point at which the Bill applies to when a section 7 report is ordered. I was really struck by her saying that, because it would be quite a big change to the Bill. She was very specific, however, and she knows a lot about the issue. She said: “One suggestion I would like to make on CAFCASS’s behalf is that family group decision making should be offered to families where the court has ordered a section 7 report—a welfare report that, if ordered to do so, the local authority has to produce for the court in respect of what it advises about where children should live and who they should spend time with. I think the opportunity for a family group decision-making meeting for those families is important.” –– [ Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 32, Q72.] That is a big proposal, but it comes from someone with huge experience, who clearly has some real concerns. Will Ministers agree to take that away and consider it further as we make progress in Committee and in the Lords? The head of CAFCASS made a second big proposal on Tuesday: “The Bill tends to focus on those who are in public law proceedings. Two thirds of the children we work with are in private law proceedings, where there are family disputes about who children spend their time with and where they live. Very often, those children are in families where conflict is very intense. There are risks to them; there is domestic abuse. The Bill is silent on children in private law proceedings, and I think there is an opportunity for that to be different.” –– [ Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 32, Q72.] My second question to the Ministers is: have the Government reflected on that suggestion, and do they have any plans to respond? They might not be able to give us a full and final answer today, but what is their basic reaction to that? Another expert made some significant and specific suggestions about the clause. Will the Government respond to concerns put forward in the written evidence from the Family Rights Group, a charity that helped to introduce family conferences, which were used in New Zealand, to the UK in the 1990s? It said: “we are concerned that the family group decision making offer in the Bill is too ambiguous and state-led in the way it is framed, with the state determining how, who attends and even if it happens. Without strengthening the provisions, we fear in practice it will not deliver the Bill’s ambition, to ensure fair and effective opportunity across England for children and families to get the support they need to stay safely together.” Essentially, it is worried that the form will be followed but the spirit will be lost. It goes on: “We are already seeing evidence of local authorities claiming to use such approaches, including reference to ‘family-led decision making’ to describe meetings which are led by professionals and where family involvement is minimal. Without clear definition of terms, and a set of principles and standards for practice, it is likely that in many authorities, such meetings will be professionally-led, with the child and family engagement peripheral…If the legislation does not specify what is expected, we are also concerned approaches unsupported by evidence will proliferate.”

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Opposition do not have amendments to this clause, but we do have some questions. This change is generally a very good idea and we welcome it. I have sat where the Minister is sitting, so I am conscious that, even when a Minister wants to answer all the questions posed by the Opposition, it is sometimes impossible—but I hope, thinking about some of the questions in the last part of our proceedings, that she will continue to consider those and see whether she can get answers to them. I know it is utterly impossible to answer all these questions in real time. On the Opposition Benches, we welcome the inclusion of education agencies in safeguarding arrangements. All too often, the school is the one agency that sees the child daily and has a sense of when they are in need of protection or are in danger. Our conversations with schools all underline that. We have heard that they welcome this change and that it is a good thing. Last year, schools were the largest referrer of cases, after the police, to children’s social care, and I know from friends who are teachers just how seriously they take this issue. One of my teacher friends runs a sixth form and she spends her spare time reading serious case reviews, so I know that teachers take this issue deadly seriously, and we want to help them to have as much impact as they can. My questions relate to nurseries, particularly childminders, because this clause is about an extension to education, not just to schools. We understand that child protection meetings can take place via video conference to make them easier to attend. We would just like the Government to confirm and talk about what conversations they have had with those kinds of organisations, which are often literally one-woman bands, about how they will be able to participate, given their very limited staffing and the imperative to look after children in their care effectively. If the childminder has to go off to some meeting and are shutting down their business for the day, do they have to ask the parents who leave their children with them to find their own childcare? How do we make it easier for these organisations, particularly in relation to really small, really vulnerable children, to take part in this process? We do not doubt that they will want to contribute; we just want some reassurance that the Department is thinking about how that will work well in practice. The Government argue that education should not be a fourth safeguarding partner because, unlike with other safeguarding partners, there is not currently a single organisation or individual who can be a single point of accountability for organisations across the whole education sector and different types of educational institutions. I understand the Government’s argument, but there are other views. Barnardo’s says in its briefing that “the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care recommended that the Department for Education make education the fourth statutory safeguarding partner, highlighting that the Department should ‘work with social care and school leaders to identify the best way to achieve this, ensuring that arrangements provide clarity.’ However, the new Bill falls short of this recommendation, mandating only that education providers should always be considered ‘relevant partners’. This should improve the recognition of the importance of education providers in safeguarding arrangements, but we believe that this does not go far enough to protect children at risk. We recognise that the diverse nature of the education sector could pose a practical challenge in identifying a relevant senior colleague to represent education as a statutory partner. Education settings have a wealth of experience in working with children to keep them safe and we believe it is vital that options are explored to ensure they are able to fully participate in…the planning and delivery of local safeguarding arrangements.” I want to hear what the Government’s response to those arguments is. As the Minister said, this is a rare legislative moment, so we want to ensure that these important contributions and questions are heard and answered. Turning to a slightly different question, I understand that there might not be a single point of accountability—which is why this Government, like the previous Government, are not pursuing education providers as the fourth safeguarding partner—but to make this work well, a single point of contact for education might be sensible. Can the Minister confirm that, to support the successful operation of this provision, every local authority currently provides childminders in particular with a line they can call to discuss any concerns, both specific and more general? Schools generally know where to go, but is that true at the moment of nurseries and childminders?

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 19, in clause 3, page 5, line 3, at end insert— “16EC Report on work and impact of multi-agency child protection teams (1) The Secretary of State must report annually on the work and impact of multi-agency child protection teams. (2) A report under this section shall include analysis of — (a) the membership of multi-agency child protection teams; (b) the specific child protection activities undertaken by such teams; (c) best practice in multi-agency work; and (d) the impact of multi-agency child protection teams on — (i) information sharing; (ii) risk identification; and (iii) joining up services between children’s social care, police, health services, education and other agencies, including the voluntary sector.” This amendment would require the Secretary of State to report on the effectiveness of multi-agency child protection teams.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I have nothing to say about these amendments. I will reserve my comments for our amendment, which is in a different group. I completely understand what the Minister is doing. Amendment 1 agreed to. Amendment made: 2, in clause 3, page 3, line 36, leave out “the director of children’s services for”.— (Catherine McKinnell .) See the explanatory statement for Amendment 1 .

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Members will know that we are extremely supportive of this principle and agenda. We generally welcome the clause and think it is sensible, but we of course have questions, and we have tabled an amendment. Members know that a huge amount of good multi-agency work is already going on to safeguard children, and it has the potential to address some of the really serious information-sharing gaps that have been so visible in pretty much every serious case review, from Victoria Climbié to the present day. Although we welcome the introduction of the multi-agency child protection teams, we have some substantive questions about them. First, will the Minister set out her expectation for the activity of these teams? Teams can have a formal meeting, but then there is what they really do. If there is just one team in a local authority, that team may become a source of advice but not really generate new activity. I have a question about the scale of different local authorities and how many teams there will be in an area. This might seem a bit specific, but obviously there is a huge difference between Rutland, which is a single unitary authority with a population of 40,000, and Birmingham, which is also a single unitary authority. We need to ensure—I will come back to this in a second—that we can have provision for these teams to meet and work on a geography that makes sense. The Government are building on a lot of activity that already exists, but they are slightly changing it in various ways. Will the Minister be specific about what these teams will do that is not being done today? How do they relate to, and how are they different from, existing multi-agency safeguarding hub teams? Linked to that, should we assume that they will be resourced to deal with all section 47 referrals? If they are not, it will potentially become another gatekeeping process—they would be making judgments in good faith, but not necessarily with the information to make them safely. I hope that the Minister can reassure me that the teams will be expected to do things like carrying out home visits, attending strategy meetings and having a much clearer view of health information. There is also the crucial area of private law proceedings, where children are all too often invisible. I wonder what the expectation is for the involvement of these teams in private law cases. There are real concerns, as we heard the other day, that when CAFCASS makes a referral to the local authority in these cases, it looks like the threshold is not met because of the lack of social services and police involvement with the family in the past. Particularly in cases of domestic violence, we know that those kinds of appearances can be deceptive. The clause makes provision for two or more local authorities to work together to deliver multi-agency child protection teams, and the explanatory notes state that that would enable police and health services to work within local authority boundaries to make the best use of their resources, which they do not always do. I can see the sense in that. To go back to our neighbours in Rutland, they come under Leicestershire and Rutland for the police and for health, and they have a lot of cross-border students in their schools. However, I want to check that the reverse is also true, and that there will be no impediment to having multiple teams within a local authority, and no sense that the police or health services with a bigger geographical footprint should not be expected to service more than one team in a large local authority. That question is about the geography. Another question is about the timeliness of meetings, which is crucial. The best possible group of people in the world could be down to attend a meeting, but if they do not meet often enough, things will go wrong. Does the clause give the Government the power to specify in regulations how often such meetings take place? Do the Government intend to specify that kind of thing, or—maybe perfectly reasonably—not? Will they try to establish some norms around the frequency of these teams meeting? I do not have an incredibly strong view; I am just interested. I also have some questions about the cast list, which was the subject of the last group of amendments; we went from a named person with a specific role to someone from a particular organisation. Subsection (4) lists a social worker, a police officer, a health professional and so on. Is the assumption that it will be the same person who attends each time? What happens in the absence of those people? Presumably, a person of the same category can be substituted for a period—for example, if the policeperson on the team goes off sick, someone can be substituted. Although I am not an expert, I think that having the same cast list each time is broadly the right model. It is a much better model than one where, for example, the social worker for that case turns up once and perhaps do not go to that meeting ever again or for another year, meaning they are not in a position to join the dots. However, there is always a risk that appointing specialists within a team deskills others on the team. That sense that everybody has to stay alert and maintain professional curiosity gets a bit lost, and there is an assumption that the specialists on the team will deal with it. That is obviously not what the Government intend, but can we get some reassurance that they have thought about how to avoid that? In oral evidence on Tuesday, we heard from— [ Interruption. ] May I ask you, Sir Christopher, whether we are going until 1.30 pm? The Opposition Whip is looking anxiously at the clock.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. As this is the first amendment on the first day of our line-by-line consideration, I will briefly say that although the Opposition have lots of serious questions about the second part of the Bill, there is much in part 1 of the Bill that we completely support. In fact, a lot of the Bill builds on work that the last Government were doing. To quote the great 1980s philosopher Belinda Carlisle, we may find that “We dream the same thing We want the same thing”. It may not always seem like that, because we are going to ask some questions, but they are all about improving the Bill. A lot of them are not our questions, but ones put to us by passionate experts and those who work with people in these difficult situations. The relevant policy document sets out why it is so important to get this clause right. It highlights the number of serious case incidents, which was 405 last year, and the number of child deaths, which was 205—every single one a terrible tragedy. Around half of those deaths were of very young children, often under 2; they are physically the most vulnerable children, because they cannot get away. Our amendment 18 seeks to make clause 1 work in practice. It reflects some, but not all, of the concerns that we heard in oral evidence on Tuesday from Jacky Tiotto, the chief executive of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. The clause states: “Before a local authority in England makes an application for an order…the authority must offer a family group decision-making meeting”. In general, those meetings are a good thing, and we all support them—the last Government supported them; the new Government support them. They are already in statutory guidance. However, we have two or three nagging worries about what will happen when, as it were, we mandate a good thing. The first is about pace. As I said in the oral evidence session, I worry that once family group decision making becomes a legal process and right, people will use the courts to slow down decision making, and that local authorities will sometimes worry about fulfilling this new requirement—although the meetings are generally a good thing—when their absolute priority should be getting a child away from a dangerous family quickly. A long time ago, when I used to work with people who were street homeless, I met a woman who was a very heavy heroin user and a prostitute. She was about to have— [ Interruption. ]

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Yes, Sir Christopher. Amendment proposed : 18, in clause 1, page 2, line 26, at end insert— “(10) Nothing in this section permits an extension to the 26-week limit for care proceedings in section 14(2)(ii) of the Children and Families Act 2014.”— (Neil O'Brien.) This amendment clarifies that nothing in this section should imply an extension to the statutory 26-week limit for care proceedings. Question put, That the amendment be made.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will give way; I have finally managed to get my train of thought in order again.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I have two specific questions, although there may be no answer to the first—it may be for regulations, and there may be no decision yet. If a large local authority such as Birmingham wants to have more than one of these things, can it do so? My other question —which Iaised before the break—is about substitutes. What happens if one of the nominated people is sick? The meeting obviously still needs to go ahead, so can substitutes be used?

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I have already asked most of my questions, but I want to add some simple ones to those. First, I may have missed this in the conversation, but is the intent that the system will be for people up to the age of 18? Secondly, what are the Government’s initial thoughts about people who do not have NHS numbers? Thirdly, I wish to sharpen and bring out the point I was making in my questions about all the different get-outs from the system. The case of Victoria Climbié is the ultimate example: she had eight different identifiers with her name spelled differently every single time. The worry is that the system needs not to have too many holes in it—although it needs some, otherwise everything would grind to a halt. At the bottom of page 7 of the Bill, proposed new section 16LB(5) of the Children Act 2004 says: “Subsection (4) applies only so far as the designated person considers that the inclusion of the consistent identifier is likely to facilitate the exercise…of a function…that relates to safeguarding”. That is one out. Proposed new subsection (6) says: “Subsection (4) does not apply if the designated person considers that” it would be “detrimental” to include it, which is another out—and perfectly sensible in a way. Proposed new subsection (7) says that the person does not need to comply if they do not know the consistent identifier and it would slow things down. So there are quite a lot of outs. We will not press our amendment to a vote, and the Minister is right to say that the statutory guidance requires a record of why decisions have been made at the local level, but I am sure that the Department and officials would want to set things up in such a way that a national report can be built out of that data, to figure out what is going on at a local level. Finally, let me explain what I was going on about with the complexity of parsing proposed new subsection (9), which says: “A duty under this section does not operate to require or authorise the processing of information which would contravene the data protection legislation (but the duty must be taken into account in determining whether the processing would contravene that legislation).” That is quite a complicated sentence that I find difficult. I would be supportive of Ministers if they want to give frontline professionals more legal protection so that they think, “I don’t need to worry about data protection first—I need to worry about the safety of children first.”

• 23 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I have already talked about our general support for clause 3, as well as some of the issues around the geography, content and cast lists of the teams, which brings me on to funding. On Tuesday, we asked the Local Government Association about the new burdens doctrine and whether there would be clarity on funding for these new requirements. The Government do not plan to commence this clause until 2027, so will local authorities be appropriately resourced to meet these demands? In its summary of the Bill, the Department for Education says: “Later commencement allows more time to secure funding and resources and workforces will have more time to engage and prepare for change.” Do the Government know roughly how much extra funding will be required? As Ruth Stanier from the LGA said in her evidence to us on Tuesday, “the new burdens doctrine must be applied in the usual way. There are a number of measures in this Bill for which additional funding will be required, for example the new multi-agency units.” – – [ Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 13, Q21.] We are talking about those multi-agency units here. What are the Minister’s rough estimates of what will be required, and at roughly what point will that be agreed? Again, the DFE notes on the Bill say that it will be “set out in regulations how the multi-agency child protection teams will carry out their day-to-day activities.” That will be extremely specific; for example, it says: “The new provisions will include a power for the Secretary of State to set out in regulations requirements for the practitioners who are nominated to be part of the multiagency child protection teams. This might include examples of the types of ‘minimum qualifications or experience’ that they will need, which have not been included in the legislation as this will require discussion with the relevant work forces, including police, health and education, to understand what would be relevant”. The big question is: how much will this roughly cost, and when will the Government agree that with local government, so that we can fulfil the requirements of the new burdens doctrine? I would like to turn to amendment 19. I have come to believe very strongly, in public services, in the importance of setting up self-improving dynamics whenever that is possible. The Japanese talk about the principle of “kaizen”, or continuous improvement, and really that is the spirit of our amendment. Everybody supports the idea of the new multi-agency meetings, and we are all supportive of the principle of trying to make that happen really well. We do not want just a meeting, or that the letter of the law is followed, but the spirit of it is. We really want to do this as well as we can, and that is what our amendment is about. There are very different ways of making these things work, and they work in very different places already. There is lots of scope to learn from each other at the local level, and central Government have scope to learn from them all. The amendment is self-explanatory, so I will not go through it, but it is basically looking for a report on all the different aspects of the ways in which this clause plays out on the ground. I am keen to press it to a vote, and I hope it is one that the Government might accept, at least in some form.